Pedestal-mounted binoculars and telescopes are conventional types of viewing devices located in parks or at roadside lookouts and similar places to assist tourists and other pedestrians in locating and viewing distant site objects. However, the aiming of such devices towards any of a variety of such distant objects is more often left to the viewer, usually without adequate guidance or instruction regarding what is being viewed, or suggestions of other directions in which to look to sight objects of related interest to those already seen. The information on plaques or the like as are sometimes adjacent to such viewing devices must be coordinated by the viewer with his or her manipulation of the device, often times leaving questions regarding whether or not the reference site object was actually seen. Moreover, there is usually insufficient room on such plaques for significant information to stimulate interest or otherwise suggest why the viewer should actually visit the site object.
Of course, such binoculars and telescopes can be used by only one person at a time, which is often a disadvantage.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a device for better visual orientation of pedestrians at such places of scenic or historical interest. Such a device should be automatically aimed or trained on each remote site object so that there can be no mistake regarding whether it has been identified. As in the case of binoculars and telescopes, the device should be useful for viewing a number of such site objects. However, as a corollary, it is desirable that such a device have capability for simultaneous use by a number of persons. It should also positively coordinate each viewed object with the information to be conveyed regarding it, and provide for considerably more of such information than has been generally possible in the past. Of course, since it will be permanently installed in a public place, the device should be resistant to vandalism insofar as possible.
Although magnification of the viewed object has conventionally been believed to be an advantage in such viewing devices, magnification is sometimes deceptive in that the viewer obtains a false impression that virtually all of the details of the object are visible and have been seen and understood whereas, in fact, closer actual visual inspection of the object would reveal significantly greater details for study and enjoyment. Accordinly, although magnification might be incorporated as a feature, in its preferred form the device provided by the present invention intends only to unmistakably sight and identify the object, sometimes even incompletely, without magnification, and to stimulate a desire in the viewer to actually visit and learn more regarding the sighted object.